


In the Shadow of Gods

by Stecayl



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-10
Updated: 2019-10-10
Packaged: 2020-11-28 18:04:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20970764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stecayl/pseuds/Stecayl
Summary: Pheros gives up praying.Whumptober Day 6: Dragged Away





	In the Shadow of Gods

As a girl, Pheros prays to Naga for safety for her family and for enough to eat. The weather and harvest are as good as they ever get in her village, so her family doesn't starve, and the bandits who raid them never take more than they can afford, so she sings songs of thanks to the gods.

Then, a new band of bandits comes when she is fifteen. They ransack everything, put her house to the torch, and slit her father's throat.

She kneels before Naga's altar and pleads to know why this happened. Naga doesn't answer, but Pheros understands nonetheless.

Prayer is not enough to change life in the village. The villagers will always scrape a living from the land. The local lord will take most of what they have at harvest time, ignoring their cries for help the rest of the time, and the bandits will come down from the mountains and raid slaughter as they please.

Pheros leaves her village a week later. She learns how to wield a staff, so that she can heal those who are hurt, and to cast anima magic, so that she can defend the vulnerable. She goes to Ylisstol, where the Exalt speaks of peace. But Ylisstol's borders are troubled with wars, and the villages here are no different than hers was, full of simple folk whose lives are at the mercy of the whims of bandits and their local liege lord and the weather. The villagers speak of their Exalt with shining eyes, how she sent Shepherds to defend them from raiders -- when there should be no raiders at all.

In time, she comes to Valm. Valm, where the squabbles of the dynasts have ended, where the roads are patrolled by soldiers who ensure that a woman traveling alone never needs to defend herself. No crime here goes unnoticed by the Emperor's eyes and ears; no criminal resists his army's justice.

In Valm, she kneels before the Emperor and asks to serve him.

"Why would a Valkyrie choose to follow me?" he asks her. She doesn't dare to look up at his face, but she hears the amusement in his voice.

"Because," she answers. "You'll change the world."

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Swinburne: "the murmur of spirits that sleep in the shadow of Gods from afar/Grows dim in thine ears and deep as the deep dim soul of a star"
> 
> Prompts at https://whumptober2019.tumblr.com
> 
> Inspired by Pheros's line to Chrom: "Sometimes those who will not walk must be dragged along or pushed aside." 
> 
> Originally posted on FFA: https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/391819.html?thread=2305287051#cmt2
> 
> Cleaned it up a bit for this version.


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